This past week Sony announce that DriveClub will be delisted from the Playstation Store on August 31st of 2019. Although this is extremely sad news for those that are fans of all the hard work that Paul Rustchynsky and his team at Evolution Studios did, it is not unexpected news. Paul had this to say on Twitter this past week with a great explanation for the delisting: https://twitter.com/rushy33/status/1112294854539788288?s=21
The game did not launch in the best of shape. There were server issues and Sony did not release the DriveClub Playstation Plus edition until almost a year later. However that did not hold the dev team back from making it one of the best console racers out there. From a racing perspective, there are really only 5 main racers out there: DriveClub(PS4), Gran Tourismo Sport(PS4), Forza(XBox), Forza Horizon(XBox), Project Cars 2(multi-platform). If I am being honest, I am not a huge of the hardcore racing simulation game. Don’t get me wrong, Project Cars 2 is a gorgeous game and is a fantastic sim, it just resonate with me. I have always been a fan of the numbered Forza entries. Sure Forza Horizon is a fun game, but I prefer the old school Need for Speeds. However, when it comes down to it, DriveClub is my racing game of choice for those generation, and honestly I could argue maybe one of the best racers. Let’s talk about what makes DriveClub so good.
Right from the beginning, this game looks stunning. For a racer to be good, the cars better look it, and in DriveClub they are stunning. There are a total of 110 cars across various manufacturers like Ferrari, Porsche, and Lotus to name a few. Although the cars look true to form to their real life counters partners, the weather scenery and weather effects take center stage, The scenery is sometimes hard to take your eyes off of as you drive through some of the valleys and along the cost. However, its the weather effects that truly show off their attention to detail. The way the rain beads on the windshield, to the way the water pools on the road with the sun reflecting off of it, the dev team did an amazing job.
The handling of the cars is fantastic, and for those that love drifting, there is no shortage of places to drift around a corner in a tight race. Each car has its own set statistics, which is nice because it puts the cars on equal footing until the true sims that require you to tune the car, etc. The cars also respond as you think they would in the rain. The dev team created a fantastic mechanic and its one I very much enjoyed.
Outside of the look and feel of the cars, and the weather effects, one of the most enjoyable piece of the game is its car audio. During an interview at the E3 2014 show, Paul stated they used quite a few microphones to record all the audio the cars, both inside and out. Each car has its own set of unique sounds, and it pulls you right into the game. The music provided by Hybrid fit the game extremely well and made playing the game that much more enjoyable.
Even though the servers are shutting down, I highly recommend DriveClub. You cant beat the price for it now that is part of the PlayStation 4 greatest hits, although I can imagine production for it halting once its pulled from the online store. Every person that was involved with this project did an amazing job. From car handling to weather effects, each member of the team nailed. I for one, am very happy that the former members of Evolution Studios found new studios to Jon. I personally cant wait to see what they are working on now, especially for the ones that are now working at Slightly Mad Studios.
